Mildred K. Barbour

Biography

Mildred Marshall Koonce was born and raised in Washington, D.C., the daughter of George Wolfe Koonce and Gracia M. Pile. Her father was the first and longest serving general counsel of the Army Corps of Engineers. Mildred graduated with a degree in literature from the University of Michigan in 1914. She married Irwin Barbour, manager of the Wheeler Newspaper syndicate, which syndicated her first novel, Borrowed Husbands (1921). The novel was made into a film in 1924. She divorced Barbour shortly afterward. The Wheeler Syndicate subsequently published two other novels, which were then published in hardback by Grossett and Dunlap. Mrs. Barbour renewed the copyright on her third novel, A Suitor Too Many (1928), in 1956.